Mentor of the WBA Super light heavyweight title holder (up to 79.4 kg) Russian Dmitry Bivol (20-0, 11 KOs) Gennady Mashyanov gave
interview for the USACHEV TV YouTube channel.
In a conversation, the coach spoke about the early victory of the unified IBF / WBC / WBO world champion, Canadian representative Artur Beterbiev (18-0, 18 KOs) over American Joe Smith Jr. (28-4, 22 KOs), and also outlined today’s absence prospects for organizing a duel for the title of absolute division champion against Dmitry Bivol.
Beterbiev – Smith. As per order — vRING report
– What impression did Beterbiev, as a boxer, make on you in a duel with Smith?
– In principle, it was predictable, expected, because the level of Smith and Beterbiev is completely different. I watched the fight, and Smith, of course, greatly disappointed me. Purely psychologically, I think he burned out. He came out so tense all over, drawn out, at first he ran forward, some awkward movements drawn out. Well, in general left a pale impression. I think he’s burned out. He doesn’t shine with his skill in technical terms anyway, but here he generally dragged on and there were some angular movements. Arthur is great, of course. At first he calmly figured it out, looked at what this one offered him, chose, hit, and then, after the first knockdown, there were no more questions, because he was generally lost, roughly speaking.
Joe Smith for the first time commented on the defeat against Beterbiev
– How different was Smith from the fight with Bivol?
– I already said that he was very burned out psychologically, and that’s why he was so drawn out. This is the impression I got.
– The tactics that Smith chose, in fact, taking an open fight with Beterbiev, is there something, roughly speaking, from masochism, because it is contraindicated to fight openly with Beterbiev?
– It’s out of desperation. Because technically he had nothing to offer. And yet this nervous burning in him, it, of course, affected and therefore he began to wave on autopilot. You know, just like drunken men wave in the street, so he tried to do something there in this mutual exchange. But he did not even try to do something, he brushed off the situation. Waving with closed eyes at random. This is the impression I got.
– After this fight, is your desire to fight Beterbiev as great?
– Of course. We’ve been talking about this fight for a long time. It’s just that the situation at the moment is such that Bob Arum has already announced the fight with Yarde. WBO type protection there. My understanding is that Arum doesn’t want to give the Beterbiev fight to DAZN and DAZN won’t give Bivol to ESPN.
Artur Beterbiev: “Bivol wants to fight? Ok, let’s do it!”
– Very disappointing. I thought it was more real. Arum’s fighter contracts belong to ESPN – that’s the whole point, I take it?
– Yes Yes Yes. As far as I understand, there is still involved in the money. ESPN is not ready to pay such money for a fight as DAZN, and this fight is fundamentally not interesting to anyone in America. In Canada, no one will pay money either. In Russia, we don’t talk about this at all, because fights are prohibited by these federations, and there are no people who could pay decent money for this fight. There was a situation when there was pure excitement, euphoria, when they gave a fight to Povetkin and Klitschko, hoping that Povetkin could win. And then there was the real money that that fight was worth. But today we do not have such people. There was and is Ryabinsky, but today he is not ready to invest that kind of money in a fight in Russia.